October 24, 2010

"Neither of these stories is actually news to people who were paying attention, but now — conveniently enough just before an election, and even nicely timed for George W. Bush’s new book release — these stories are getting a fresh round of play. . . ."

The Lancet paper is a near-textbook example of poor statistical practice. Sample too small & too messily-distributed to allow for any sort of conclusions to be drawn, but they drew them anyway to advance a political agenda.

Impossible to tell from the linked account whether the leaked paper and the Lancet were even trying to count the same thing.

Actually it's easy to tell. They are not counting the same thing. The leaked papers are counting military action, terrorist attacks, and murder type action.

The Lancet study was counting all deaths. Thus, if the military destroyed a hospital, the Lancet study would count people who died because they were sick and couldn't get treated at that hospital. The leaked papers would not count those people.

So the leaked papers do not disprove the Lancet study. However, there were serious methodological flaws with the study, along with very likely fraud in the data collection, making it's results worse than useless.

Mustard agent isn't pleasant stuff HD. I was a school trained (NATO Staff Officer School at Oberammergau) NBC specialist. One of the teaching points was to dilute Mustard 10-1 with watter then use a pin to dab the smallest possible amount on your forearm. The resulting blister was about the size of a quarter. a small bit of aerosol version in your lungs can be deadly.

I wonder why these leaks follow Gen Hug Shelton"s book where he claims the US had no reason to invade Iraq and did so only because of "a series of lies" told to the American people by the Bush administration.

I wonder why these leaks follow Gen Hug Shelton"s book where he claims the US had no reason to invade Iraq and did so only because of "a series of lies" told to the American people by the Bush administration.

WOW so much silliness packed into one posting:1)Does the Shelton book REALLY say this R-V/2)If they were lies then, they were lies from VEPP AlGore, POTUS Clinton, Senator Clinton and Senator John Kerry, as well...from the 1990's.3)Yes, I'm SURE Wikileaks coordinated its release in order to discredit Shelton,. Because Julian Assange is a noted CONSERVATIVE.Dood/doodette you just need to stick with World Class Environmental Engineering. You are rapidly becoming merely a purveyor of silly Leftist talking points...points easily refuted

Dear Joe,To help with your research and see what this chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff from 1997-2001 had to say here is a link with quotes from his book, which are hardly leftist taking points. Joe your bobble head response of what about the others who lied do not cover up the fact of who was in charge.tp://beyondthecurtain.wordpress.com/2010/10/14/gen-hugh-shelton-iraq-invasion-was-due-to-a-series-of-lies-told-to-the-american-people/

Well then R-V, a whole lot of other folks LIED too, and voted for the WAR! Sorry, who was in charge when the Iraq Liberation Act was signed, again? Who voted for the War, Kerry/Clinton...Who saw the same WMD intell, SHELTON...who didn't resign when Clinton bombed Iraq, based on lies? SHELTON....

Sorry dood/doodette...you'll have to peddle that dreckh over at the Daily Kos.

Paul Zrimsek wrote:Impossible to tell from the linked account whether the leaked paper and the Lancet were even trying to count the same thing.

What was the Lancet study counting to come up with such inflated numbers? It certainly wasn't dead bodies. I read somewhere how they extrapolated their numbers and it was something along the lines of, they interviewed a few familiies in a neighborhood, got the number of dead and timed that number by the population or some cockamamie calculation that made no sense. First of all, it was in the middle of a war. It's extremely hard to count, and certian areas they couldn't even reach to count anybody or interview anybody (as there was a war going on). Secondly, those interviewed may have been more affected by the war so those interviewed may have had twice the number of casualties than the family down the street who had none. Or certain neighborhoods may have been harder hit than others so if you use those numbers to extrapolate the casualties you'll get strange numbers.However they came by their calculations though it was clearly WAY beyond anything remotely resembling reality.

(The Crypto Jew)Three terms that could be used in regards to the Lancet study:1) Validity;2) Utility; and3) Veracity.The study possessed only one, Validity. That is the study was conducted in a reasonably acceptable social science manner, the methodology was not grossly inappropriate and consistent and valid statistical operations were performed upon the collected data.Utility, HOWEVER the study was not particularly useful. IIRC, the study, itself, published as its 95% Confidence Interval, i.e., the range of findings in which 95% of the time the actual number would lie, as 5,000to ~500,000. In short the Lancet study said, “Between 5,000 and one-half million people have died in this war.” How useful is that finding? If I were to tell you that the expenditure of $1 Million would save between 5,000 and 500,000 thousand lives, would I really have helped you make a decision? This study lacked practical utility. It’s only utility was POLITICAL, as an opposition piece to the war.

Veracity, the study lacked veracity. We know what it takes to kill several hundred thousand civilians. It takes RAF Bomber Command, US 8th and 15th Air Forces, two years, and several million tons of bombs to kill 600,000 German civilians. Tell me, R-V, Garage, Cookie, et al. where were these massive around-the-clock air raids and their resultant fire storms? That’s right they didn’t happen…we can conclude that US/Iraqi military action NEVER approached the level of violence needed to achieve a historical level of civilian collateral damage.

Further, we know what it takes to kill several hundred thousand Rwandans. Tens of thousands of people with machetes, petrol, and fire arms, several weeks. And the resultant carnage filled the Nile with dead bodies. Where was the equivalent level of violence from the Shi’i/Kurdish population? Where were these necessary piles of bodies, ~424 bodies per day, for three years? Heck we know what it took for Saddam to kill several hundred thousand Iraqi’s, chemical weapons and tanks….

Bottom-Line: from the get-go it was OBVIOUS that no level of violence even closely approximating the level needed to generate the Lancet study’s claims was EVER employed. Anyone thinking, rationally, should have seen that.

re the lancet study: it was obvious from the beginning the study was flawed--they used a cluster sampling technique that is valid ONLY IF the population is not mobile--the population was, in fact mobile. this is basic epidemiology --their methodolgy did not generate random numbers.

It was a piece of shit from the beginning and was released only to influence a US election. The Lancet has not the decency to be ashamed and apologive. Genuine scumbags and charlatans

Joe--agree with your post except re validity. The cluster sampling technique was developed by the WHO in the 1980s and involves random sampling of geographical elements--It assumes a a non mobile population. (it was the WHO immunization study in Africa that led to this form of cluster sampling)

"Well then R-V, a whole lot of other folks LIED too, and voted for the WAR! Sorry, who was in charge when the Iraq Liberation Act was signed, again? Who voted for the War, Kerry/Clinton...Who saw the same WMD intell, SHELTON...who didn't resign when Clinton bombed Iraq, based on lies? SHELTON...."

So who's letting anyone off the hook? Our government's criminal lies regarding Iraq and it's criminal aggression against Iraq certainly predate George W. Bush's appointment to the White House. If George W. Bush is a war criminal and a mass murderer--and he is--so too, certainly, are Clinton and Obama and all those in Congress from both parties then and now who are or have been complicit in our aggression against Iraq.

Joe's point about the Clinton administration is the big one when it comes to rebutting roesch. This was an article of faith around the world for years and it strains credulity that everyone was fooled by Saddam.

As for Shelton, he was a Clinton appointee. Willie never appointed anyone to anything not beholden to him (Wesley Clark, anyone?). Shelton's doing his bit to make the Republicans look bad; too bad history caught up to him.

1. Lancet study was bogus. Everyone but the Left admits it, and they were thus as discredited as the researchers. Well, not really - the researchers lost a good deal of their professional reputations - the Leftists did not.

2. However, claiming a few stray chem warfare shells "vindicated" WMD claims - is ridiculous. A good sized store of nerve gas rises to a WMD capacity. But mustard gas, absolutely as nasty as SGT York said it is, produces less casualties on target than a 155 HE frag shell on target. We would be stupid to continue to try and define "WMD" downwards to a couple mustard gas shells or letting the Justice Dept claim a grenade or a car bomb is a WMD device. Just as we boxed ourselved in with letting "Toooooorrrrrrttttuuuuuurrrre!!!!!!" be redefined downwards to mean a female soldier speaking sternly to an Islamoid POW that he can;t get more ice cream - thus "humiliating" said Islamoid POW and constituting one of the criteria under "International Law" of "Tooorrrrtuuuuurrrreee!!".

If a 120 mm mustard gas shell with capacity to cause 3 casualties in a standard dispersed troop formation or 40 casualties in a city hit is a WMD, then what is a B-52 bombload of 128 500 lb bombs that can kill 818 people in standard troop dispersed formation or 4,300 civilians??

If the Justice Dept wants to get stiffer sentences and claim a 40-lb car bomb is a WMD - then what is a Hellfire missile or a MIA2 Tank???

Jeez everyone does- that has become an American tradition. As far as I can tell, no one even got fired after 911, 2000 Florida vote fiasco, the housing meltdown, the Fweddie & Fwannie meltdown, the bad intel in Iraq [hell CIA boss George Tenet got The Freedom Medal] and I hear many state pension funds are bankrupt as is social security.

Yes, in real terms, everyone gets off the hook, which is a tragedy and a function of our having become a corrupt, failed state.

My point was much narrower and was meant as a reply to the statement that if Bush was guilty of lying about Iraq, then so were others, including Clinton and Kerry who had also accused Saddam of having WMD.

Once again I see the right's distain for honorable men who risk their lives for our country and dare to tell the truth about what they have learned while serving this country. Yes the likes of Paul Wolfowitz, who pushed for war and told the public Iraq would pay for it, should be trusted over Hugh Shelton who writes: In spite of the setting, it didn't take long for the meeting to turn ugly, with Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz pushing hard to invade Iraq, Colin Powell and I countering that we should go after bin Laden at this time. And we wonder why were are still involved in two needless wars?

Bush's lies were more serious than that: he asserted that Saddam had not just WMD programs, but that he had extant WMD. Bush even recited specific amounts of specific weapons that Saddam possessed. Worse still, he and Cheney and Rice repeatedly made suggestive comments that were intended to create the impression in a fearful public's mind that Saddam was very close to actually having nuclear weapons, at which time he would either launch them at the west directly or pass them off to his (non-existent) Al-Qaeda pals to use against us.

However, Saddam had destroyed his stores of WMD back in the 90s. Saddam's son-in-law briefly defected to the west and he provided information to our government that he, personally, had overseen the dismantling of the WMD programs and the destruction of the weapons. (The son-in-law was later enticed to return to Iraq, that "all was forgiven." On his return, he was arrested, probably tortured, and ultimately executed.)

In the months prior to 9/11, both Condi Rice and Colin Powell stated publicly (as seen in the video recordings of their statements), that Saddam had been disarmed and he could marshall no threat to "his neighbors." Well, if he was impotent even to be a threat to his neighbors in the region, how could he simultaneously be an existential threat to America?

He couldn't be...and wasn't.

Moreover, in a years long war with Iran, with mass casualties on both sides, Saddam did not prevail. The truth is Saddam was a murderous tyrant but he was small potatoes and he was never a threat to America. It was convenient for Bush to depict Saddam as an imminent and existential threat to justify a war that his administration wanted to have. Far from being the "last, unavoidable choice" Bush pretended it to be, their decision to go to war was their automatic first response once they saw they could use the 9/11 attacks as justification.

The Clinton administration was no better. It has been reported recently that a Clinton cabinet member--unnamed, but some have suggested it was Madeline Albright--asked a general if we could send an American aircraft to fly low and slow over Iraq airspace, in hopes it would draw fire and even be shot down by Iraqi ground fire, which action could then be used as an excuse for America to attack Iraq. The general replied, "sure," to the initial delight of the cabinet member, until the general continued, "just as soon as we get you trained and checked out to put your ass in that plane."

Throughout the 90s, American policy toward Iraq was belligerent, and lies about Iraq were the order of the day long before Bush got in office.

"lies about Iraq were the order of the day long before Bush got in office"

So, Robert...Are you accusing the United Nations Security Council of lying?

You may recall that, over a 12 year period, the UNSCR issued 17 resolutions on Iraq -- 14 of which dealt directly with WMD.

U.N. inspectors had quantified what Saddam had and what he destroyed. The math did not net out to "no WMD" -- not even close.

See my first comment in this thread for more. The second link in that first comment documents the fact that -- even if you buy the absurd media meme of "no WMD" -- the invasion of Iraq was still "arguably the most justified case of military action the US has ever taken in its history".

I can't say, as I don't know what the UN Security Council said about Saddam's weapons. However, as you place great import on their stamp of authority, what does it say to you that the UN Security Council did not sanction our invasion of Iraq? That we are a member nation of the UN (not to mention that we are members the Security Countil itself) means we may only attack another nation in cases of self-defense against an imminent or already commenced attack or where the UN Security Council has voted to authorize such an attack.

We tried to have such a vote passed, but we withdrew it when it became apparent the Council's majority would oppose. And we certainly weren't facing any imminent attack from Iraq.

Far from being "arguably the most justified case of military action the US has ever taken in its history,", (a ludicrous statement), our invasion was a war crime.

"U.N. inspectors had quantified what Saddam had and what he destroyed. The math did not net out to "no WMD" -- not even close."

Scott Ritter was one of those inspectors, and he states that the portion that could not be accounted for was essentially mere traces of the larger body. He said for legitimate accounting purposes it was important to try to ascertain the location or fate of those remnants, but that, on balance, Saddam could be said to have essentially disposed of his arsenal, that any unaccounted for remnants did not constitute a substantive or threatening body of weapons.

The UN inspections regime that was placed in Iraq in the months before our 2003 invasion were unable to find any trace of weapons, even when given specific directions by the White House as to where to look. Remember, we did not state we believed Saddam had WMD, that we were guessing or following up on allegations, but that we knew he had them, that our evidence was "bullet-proof." In fact, we went out of our way to state explicitly that were not making suppositions but were speaking factually. I think Hans Blix said something to the effect that it was odd how such seeming certainty by the U.S. government of Saddam's having WMD was coupled with such absolute lack of knowledge of where they were.

Sorry, you've been blinded by ideology. You're way beyond the capacity for being persuaded by facts or reason. I won't waste anymore of my time on a hopeless ideologue. Enjoy your Bush hating fantasies.

Once, again, Resolution 1441 was not a vote approving military action against Iraq, however much you may wish it so.

Our invasion was in breach of our treaty requirments as members of the UN, and so was a war crime.

This is not partisan; Bush happened to be in office at the time, and he and his henchmen were the ones who launched the war, but the previous administration was culpable, too, as is the present administration.

Tuwaitha and an adjacent research facility were well known for decades as the centerpiece of Saddam's nuclear efforts.

Israeli warplanes bombed a reactor project at the site in 1981. Later, U.N. inspectors documented and safeguarded the yellowcake, which had been stored in aging drums and containers since before the 1991 Gulf War. There was no evidence of any yellowcake dating from after 1991, the official said.

U.S. and Iraqi forces have guarded the 23,000-acre site — surrounded by huge sand berms — following a wave of looting after Saddam's fall that included villagers toting away yellowcake storage barrels for use as drinking water cisterns.

“The missed story is the increasing evidence that Niger, in West Africa, was indeed the locus of an illegal trade in uranium ore for rogue states including Iraq.”

3) The 550 metric tons of yellowcake stored at Tuwaitha may or may not have been exclusively obtained prior to 1991 (as if that mattered -- see my previous comment). Either way, the evidence suggests Plame and Wilson were more partisan than honest.

The 550 metric tons of yellowcake stored at Tuwaitha may or may not have been exclusively obtained prior to 1991 (as if that mattered -- see my previous comment

The IAEA monitors logged 500 tons in 1992, according to their official report. Did they miss some? Or did Saddam Hussein add 50 tons? Or is it a discrepancy between long tons and short tons?

In any event, if you're sitting on a pile of 500 tons of yellow cake, why would you be in the market for more?

But if you can't use it, why keep it? Inertia? It was hard to come by so why be in a hurry to get rid of it? No market? Low market price? Or maybe the obvious reason: trade sanctions with Iraq from 1990 till the US invasion.

The Valerie Plame story is just gossip column fodder as far as I can tell.

“Noting the announcement by Iraq on 5 August 1998 that it had decided to suspend cooperation with the United Nations Special Commission and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on all disarmament activities…

Recalling also the letter from the Director General of the IAEA to the President of the Security Council of 11 August 1998 (S/1998/766) which reported the refusal by Iraq to cooperate in any activity involving investigation of its clandestine nuclear programme”

Saddam -- who had a very long history of attempting to develop a nuclear weapon -- booted out all the inspectors so he could hang onto his 550 metric tons of yellowcake uranium so that, as soon as the moment was right (as soon as he shook off the already crumbling sanctions), he could resume his longstanding goal of developing nuclear weapons.

Saddam -- who had a very long history of attempting to develop a nuclear weapon -- booted out all the inspectors so he could hang onto his 550 metric tons of yellowcake uranium so that, as soon as the moment was right (as soon as he shook off the already crumbling sanctions), he could resume his longstanding goal of developing nuclear weapons

Or nuclear power. Reactor fuel is made from yellowcake.

Recalling also the letter from the Director General of the IAEA to the President of the Security Council of 11 August 1998 (S/1998/766) which reported the refusal by Iraq to cooperate in any activity involving investigation of its clandestine nuclear programme”

Big deal. Saddam let IAEA inspectors back into the country in 2000.

The question remains: why focus on Saddam's destroyed nuclear weapons capability when the rogue state of North Korea was much closer to developing nuclear weapons within easy lobbing distance of Japan and South Korea, two countries whose defense we are directly responsible for?

1) “Big deal. Saddam let IAEA inspectors back into the country in 2000.”

“Big deal”? Really?

On January 26, 2000 the IAEA reported on their final token inspection:

“A physical inventory verification of nuclear material remaining at the Tuwaitha site in Iraq was carried out by a five-person IAEA team between 22 and 25 January… No conclusions can be drawn on the results of the inspection”

“Deploring the fact that Iraq has not provided an accurate, full, final, and complete disclosure, as required by resolution 687 (1991), of all aspects of its programmes to develop weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles with a range greater than one hundred and fifty kilometres, and of all holdings of such weapons, their components and production facilities and locations, as well as all other nuclear programmes, including any which it claims are for purposes not related to nuclear-weapons-usable material”

2) “The question remains: why focus on Saddam's destroyed nuclear weapons capability when the rogue state of North Korea was much closer to developing nuclear weapons”

True enough, North Korea is a classic example of the abysmal failures of diplomacy, the United Nations and the IAEA. That leaves only the military option. But:

A) The cost -- in civilian lives -- of invading North Korea would be many orders of magnitude higher than Iraq. The entire city of Seoul would be murdered within minutes.

B) North Korea has historically used their nuclear program merely as a means of extorting money. Saddam repeatedly used WMD to murder innocent civilians.